Videos - Page 208

After looking at the incredibly uneven betting odds on the "Cyborg" Santos-Marloes Coenen Strikeforce women’s lightweight title bout, we couldn’t help but wonder whether Coenen is walking into certain doom on Saturday night. Since she’s fought mostly in Europe and Japan, we haven’t gotten the chance to see many of her fights until now (except this one), but come on, she can’t be that outmatched against "Cyborg," can she?

In the interest of at least attempting to know what we’re talking about, we did a little research on Coenen. What we learned is that her stand-up is decent, though not without some defensive holes, and she really knows her way around an armbar. Seriously. The fight you see above was Coenen’s fifth professional bout, and one of three meetings with Takahashi. She won them all in the first round (two by armbar, one by TKO) and the fights only got more lopsided as Coenen improved over the years.

What’s interesting is that Santos also fought Takahashi at EliteXC: Heat in 2008, where "Cyborg" won a decision. So that’s got to be an encouraging sign, right? Coenen totally owned a fighter who took Santos the distance. Right? Guys?

More of Coenen’s fights are after the jump, including her second meeting with Takahashi, her loss to Erin Toughill, and a video of what appears to be Coenen abusing some poor girl from the local middle school. Seems more and more like either Coenen gets Santos to the mat early and submits her, or else she gets her lovely facial features rearranged.

When last we saw Goran Reljic he was knocking out Wilson Gouveia in his UFC debut to keep his undefeated record intact. He seemed headed for great things, but then a back injury forced him out of a fight with Thales Leites and he had to keep himself busy by heroically saving unfortunate travelers from the perilous Adriatic Sea. But after an almost two-year layoff and a little back surgery, he returns at UFC 110 to take on C.B. Dollaway. Fortunately our friends at Raw Vegas are around to follow Reljic through his training at Xtreme Couture, giving us a glimpse of what happens in the weeks leading up to fight night. Does it include a lot of sledge hammer and medicine ball work? But of course.

The mere fact that he name checks Roy Nelson in this video is enough to support our suspicion that Jim Rome is an MMA fan, but a Brock Lesnar fan he certainly is not. Of all the possible reasons why that might be the case, Rome’s current issue with Lesnar seems to be that he was not sufficiently humbled by his brush with diverticulosis. It really seems to bug Rome that Lesnar could come so close to seeing his career ended and still come back firing pro wrestling-style one-liners at potential opponents. As if this isn’t the Lesnar we’ve all come to know and, if not love, then at least live with. As if a little hole in his stomach would be enough to turn him into Mr. Congeniality.

What happens when you get two strikers with concrete skulls and very little concern for their own safety together in one ring? In the case of Mark Hunt vs. Yosuke Nishijima, you get a slobberknocker to end all slobberknockers.

Nishijima was a Japanese pro boxer who made his MMA debut at Pride 31 on Feb. 26, 2006 against a guy whose ability to take it and dish it right back out has become the stuff of legends. Nishijima had the speed and conditioning, but Hunt had the power, the size, and the willingness to walk through anything Nishijima threw, regardless of how exhausted he was. Hunt has made a career out of being the guy who almost no one can put away, but when he came up against an opponent whose ability to endure punishment rivaled his own, you could almost see his frustration turn into awe at some point.

It took about twenty minutes of brutal punishment to settle this one, but before it was all over we learned that a) Nishijima is one tough bastard, and b) Hunt could use a little bit of work on his cardio. At least one of those things we already suspected.

So you think you’re just going to stroll down to Renzo Gracie’s gym, stick a microphone in Matt Serra‘s face, and do some boilerplate interview about how training’s been going, what he expects in the fight, blah, blah, blah for four minutes? Naw, son. "The Terra" don’t play that. Strap in, you mamaluke, because you’re in for fifteen minutes of hilarity. In this talk with Ariel Helwani, Serra discusses his beef with Matt Hughes, his upcoming showdown with Frank Trigg, the second fight with GSP (where, he seems convinced, Helwani was booing him), and how disappointing it is that you can’t buy one of those Triggonomics shirts anymore.

This freaking guy, you know what I’m saying? Forget about it. There’s not a more entertaining interview in all of MMA.

The oddest part seems to be Serra’s fixation on "Fox News Fight Game" host Mike Straka. Apropos of nothing, Serra blurts out at the 8:10 mark, "Straka wears lifts." Not that it would be surprising in the least, but one can’t help but wonder, how did he come by this information? Is it true? If it is true, what does Straka do when he meets a woman while wearing his lifts, and then is forced to drop down four inches when the relationship inevitably progresses to the take-your-shoes-off-so-we-can-have-sex stage? Do you think he constantly finds excuses to keep them on? If so, do you think those excuses get really, really weird after a few months?

All good questions, some of which are answered after the jump, and some of which we’ll just have to wonder about.

Our bro-4-life Ariel Helwani ran down to Renzo Gracie‘s NYC gym to ask the most affable member of Brazil’s first family of fighting why he feels the need to come back at 43 years old to fight in the UFC. A smiling Gracie attributes it to his irrepressible love of combat, proving yet again that some guys are just born for this stuff and there’s nothing they can do about it. Gracie refers to the chance to fight Matt Hughes at UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi as "an honor," and says he’s already dropped twenty-five pounds, so now you can kind of see his abs. Now if only he could get his wife to stop complaining about all the time he spends at the gym, he’d be golden.

If you watch this to the end, you’ll see Helwani asking Gracie to repeat one of his favorite Renzo-isms of all time. He complies but, much like the "Planet of the Apes" remake, it lacks the fire of the original. See what we mean after the jump.

Yes, we know he’s only 20 anos, and his takedown defense needs as much work as his cardio, but dammit, there’s something about this Wanderlei da Silva kid. He has a certain star quality about him, something that makes him exciting to watch even when he’s getting beat. Just check out the 1:10 mark when he gets kicked out of the ring and "the crowd goes wild," or so we are told.

We gotta admit, we’re impressed by his ability to hang in there against the bigger Dilson Filho and survive the initial onslaught to land that big elbow in the clinch. At the risk of getting too carried away after only seeing one of this youngsters fights, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that da Silva is definitely going places. Just as soon as he stops leaving himself wide open with those big, looping hooks.

If you’re feeling a little down today and are considering taking a long hot bath with a clock radio to top off the evening, you aren’t alone. Today is what many have come to call "Blue Monday." It’s officially the most depressing day of the year. In an effort to help you soldier through it, we found some fun videos that only sort of have to do with MMA.

Those of you who read Neal Taflinger’s excellent profile piece on Fedor Emelianenko in the October ’09 issue of Fight Magazine may recognize this little scene on the M-1 Global tour bus. Those of you who didn’t read it will have to live with that decision for the rest of your sad lives. Taffy is the guy with the bright orange hair in the back of the bus trying to conduct an interview via Fedor’s interpreter. Fedor is the Russian dude grinning from ear to ear after shoving some ice down the back of Gegard Mousasi‘s trousers. Some things transcend all language and cultural barriers, and ice in somebody’s pants is undoubtedly one of those things.

During the six-month layoff following his last title defense against Thiago Alves, Georges St. Pierre has been in the gym, getting even more jacked. Now walking around at 193 pounds of lean muscle, GSP is contemplating a move up to middleweight, and discusses what that would entail in the interview above. First off, he’d have to get even larger, and he’d do it through diet, not steroids, which is good to know. Also, the move would be permanent; he’s not interested in the back-and-forth weight-hopping done by guys like Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson. But like so many other UFC stars, he has no interest in fighting his friends and training partners, which include Nate Marquardt, Patrick Cote, and Denis Kang: "If I’m in mount position, and it’s time to land that big hellbow that will leave a scar on the forehead of my friend and knock him out cold with cerebral damage, if he’s my friend I will never do that." Good Lord, whatever happened to putting personal loyalties aside in the name of a paycheck?

Related:Diego Sanchezreportedly posted the message "Going back to 170" on his Facebook page last night, but it has since been removed. According to Sanchez’s manager, Jeff Clark, no decision has been made at this time regarding what weight class he will compete in next.

Cage Potato forum member Sodak posted a link to this ridiculous nonsense recently, but we were too busy paying attention to normal things to notice until now. For those of you who have ever said to yourself, ‘You know, I like MMA but I just wish there was a way to get more dudes involved at once,’ your prayers have been answered. Tag team MMA provides all the enjoyment of watching a fight where closed-fist strikes to the head are illegal, while also adding all the confusion of a total clusterfuck.

I’m sure this sounded like a great idea to somebody, probably somebody who still isn’t completely convinced that pro wrestling is fake. They must have had grand visions of a tag team MMA empire featuring epic bouts between the Honky Tonk Heartbreakers and the devious Oxford Boys, who always win with help from their meddling manager, Professor Lankenshire. But when this match ends in a tie and we have all four fighters going at it, writhing around on the mat in a pile of sweaty, desperate bodies, that’s the point when we have to realize that this thing is giving way too much ammunition to the ‘MMA is gay foreplay‘ crowd. The last thing we need is to encourage those idiots.